Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Bible scholars, particularly the Christian ones, are quick to boast about the reliability and fidelity of the Jewish oral tradition to explain away doubts about the period between when Jesus is alleged to have come back from the dead and 30-60 years later when it was first written down by the authors of the Gospels. To be fair, there is a tradition in Judaism where a deliberate, careful effort was made to pass some stories and some information on from master to student. I don’t know the research where the reliability of this tradition has been analyzed. What we have with documents like the Dead Sea Scrolls, I think, are earlier copies of documents that we also have later copies of, so we can compare and check for drift and fidelity in written transmission. But checking the reliability of oral transmission from 2,000 years ago would be a much more difficult matter. No doubt much has been written on it. Here are some reasons to doubt that this method can really do what Christians claim it does. (What follows is a better version of an analogy I’ve used before).

For all of the repetition about the accuracy of the Jewish oral tradition we hear, there are some very basic points about reliability and transmission between people that are often overlooked. The problem is that we often overlook the cumulative effect of having information repeated again and again as it passes through different speakers. A simple example from probability theory can illustrate the point.

Suppose that a bag with a police escort arrives at a courthouse in Los Angeles. We can suppose that is part of the evidence in a trial. A court clerk receives the bag, opens it and finds a large sum of money. The clerk then asks the police who brought it in some questions. It turns out that the bag travelled from New York. Along the way, it was carried by three different police escorts. It changed hands for different legs of the journey. Let’s also suppose that the manifest has been lost so the clerk doesn’t know how much money started the trip in the bag. The clerk does some checking and discovers that there is corruption in the three police departments that had custody so that the general likelihood that a given cop is honest is .8. Let’s stipulate that if a corrupt cop gets custody of the bag, he or she will take some. And if an honest copy gets custody, he or she will deliever it to the next leg of the trip without taking any of it. The clerk wants to answer this question: What is the probability that the money that arrived in my office is the same amount of money that left New York?

The answer is the probability that the first cop will take some multiplied by the probability that the second cop took some multiplied by the probability that the third cop took some, or .8 x .8 x .8. The probability that the amount that arrived in Los Angeles was the same as the amount that left New York is .51. If you add two more cops at the .8 honesty rate it goes down to .32. And that is despite the fact that the majority of cops in each department are honest. If five cops with a honesty rating of .9 escort the money, there is only a 59% chance that all of it will arrive at the destination. If seven cops with a .95 honesty rating excort it, there is only a 66% chance that all of it will arrive without some being stolen. Of you can think of the a system that captures and relays information. It doesn’t take many generations of copies on a copy machine, particularly a poor one, for the text on the original to become unreadable and for the information to be lost partially or completely. What’s important to note here is that even when the links are highly reliable, the cumulative effect of transmission across multiple links quickly diminishes the fidelity of the system. And it doesn’t take many links, even when the links are 95% reliable for the odds to drop off to the point that it is more likely that the information/money did not make it through than the probability that it did. If there were 5 cops relaying the money from departments that were 80% honest, there is a 68% probability that someone stole some along the way.

(These numbers deal with the transmitters. If we add in a multiplier that represents the reliability of humans at reporting miracles--think of Mary telling someone she saw Jesus as being comparable to the first person who filled the bag and handed it to the cops--then the overall probability that Jesus came back from the dead becomes vanishingly small. See The Case Against Christ.)

Matters are made worse by other variables. Suppose the clerk has no independent way to know what was put in the bag in the first place; she was just handed a bag, afterall. Then she doesn’t know if it originally contained drugs, or diamonds, or cash, or bonds. She could ask the cop who handed it to her, or she could check the contents of the bag for some clue. Suppose there is a note inside the bag itself that says “This bag originally contained $10,000.” Then she counts it and finds $10,000. Now can she be assured that all of the original contents of the bag made it to her safely? No, she can’t. Notice that the note is part of the contents of the bag too. For all she knows, there was $100,000 in the bag, or 5 kilos of heroin, and when one of the cops took $90,out, or replaced the heroin with $10,000, she wrote the note and stuck it in there. Using the contents of the bag itself to determine that fidelity of the system that transmitted the bag is circular and completely unhelpful. What she needs is some independent (trustworthy!) source to corroborate the origination and transmission of the bag. If she put the money into the bag in New York, and then flew to Los Angeles with it, keeping her eyes and hands on it all the way, then she could be more assured (although a person’s honesty with themselves and even their witnessing an event are issues in many circumstances).

The point of the extended analogy should be clear. We are told by a book that has been transmitted to us across 2,000 years and countless unknown people in between that there were some important religious events that transpired in 30-35 C.E. Between those alleged events themselves and the first recording of those events into a system with relatively high fidelity (writing), there were 30-60 years. And during those several decades we do not know how many times the story was repeated or how many people it passed through before it got the authors and they wrote it down.

We have some semi-independent means of secondary corroboration. We have other historical grounds to think that the oral transmission tradition in Judaism at the time was fairly reliable. Part of our evidence is using written sources to check the error rate of stories that were written vs. relayed orally in different eras of history where we have both streams of information. But as far as we know, the stories about Jesus were spreading far and wide among the early Christians in the first two centuries. And while there may be some transmitters who have a higher fidelity than others, we’re not sure who or how many sources the authors of the Gospel stories consulted. There may be a stream of information running through the Jewish oral tradition that is more reliable, but there can be no question that people will talk, and when normal people talk and repeat stories, we know that they embellish, omit, alter, and improve either deliberately or unknowingly. We can see that the story of Jesus’ resurrection varies greatly among the Gospels. And we also know that a number of non-cannonized sources that gave even more contrary accounts were deliberately excluded. So it is difficult to accept some of the exaggerated claims about the reliability of the verbal transmission of the stories.

24 comments:

All you need is a claim of divine inspiration from the court clerk and the problem is solved.

Problems are easy when life is a constant deus ex machina!

Mocking aside, I have a feeling that a large number of theists will use that exact line of reasoning to side-step any historical, translation and human errors.

Though, one can hope it makes them question just a little bit, that's all you can hope.

And on an actual note with some merit, while I think the analogy fits, perhaps on some level I think the 'corrupt cop' situation may be a poor choice. Not because it's a poor comparison but rather I feel that using an analogy which uses corruption to be analogous to the bible's errors may instantly turn off the (non-philosophically trained, at least) theists with the negative connotations.

I fail to see why there is a problem here. Obviously there is imperfect transmission. If that is your point I agree, but you seem to be slaying a straw man here. Even the most naive of biblical scholars don't claim perfect transmission – as you point out the obvious variations between the Gospels immediately dispels any attempt to do so.

So what is your point Matt, aside from stating the obvious?

You say We are told by a book that has been transmitted to us across 2,000 years and countless unknown people in between that there were some important religious events that transpired in 30-35 C.E.

Now it seems you may be implying that the imperfect transmission argument is grounds to claim that there was no such event?

Since you presented your argument via analogy, let me respond in kind … a very much shorter one will suffice. We are told by some sources that over 2.5m people attended Obama's inauguration - others quote figures as low as 1 million.

Now do you conclude that the error in reporting means the inauguration did not take place? Clearly you would be a fool to do so. The reasonable position is that the event occurred but there is uncertainty regarding the details.

You say it is difficult to accept some of the exaggerated claims about the reliability of the verbal transmission of the stories If I had encountered such claims I would agree with you, but I have not. Perhaps you have misinterpreted the claims of serious scholars or have focused on the claims of the uninformed – either way a straw man at best.

I think a better way to approach this is to look at modern myths which are believed by small, tightly-knit groups of people. They are easy to find. There are people who claim to have seen the World Trade Center struck by a missile fired from an airliner. They are certainly mistaken, but we only know this because of the number of cameras that recorded the events. There were no cameras at the crucifixion.

Yeah, this is a great example, Anonymous. There are tens of millions of people who are utterly convinced that they have seen a ghost, or that they have had psychic contact with the dead, or that echinacea cured their cold. You've got to recalibrate your everyday expectations to get an accurate picture of just how frequently people are mistaken even about obvious things that they claim to be completely sure about.

I have to agree with you, when you wrote, "Now it seems you may be implying that the imperfect transmission argument is grounds to claim that there was no such event?"

I really don't care for Matt's argument here for two big reasons. The first and most important, in my mind at least, is yes, biblical accounts lack consistency. But who cares? If I were to discover three previously undocumented sources that gave nearly the same account of the Trojan war as Homer, I still wouldn't believe that a guy named Achilles was divinely conceived and only died to confirm a prophecy about his heel! The story isn't supported by the evidence we have today. In Matt's post there is an unstated premise that a reason a theist would believe is that there is an errant text that no human could have composed without divine revelation. I think if he doesn't state that clearly, and then state the premise that an omni-god would not allow inaccuracies in such text, he leaves too much up to the reader.

The second point, his statistical probability for the accuracy of the gospels gives the bible far too much leniency. Based on modern, successful, observations and methodologies, the probability that any of the miracles or suggested clairvoyances in the bible is so low, that no rational person could take them seriously.

M Tully, you make a good point, indeed Matt should then state the premise that an omni-god would not allow inaccuracies in such text,

But why should we credit that premise with any validity.

Firstly, IF the Bible is inspired then, warts and all, the God it refers to has allowed not exist. I am not clear on what grounds you would challenge God’s willingness to do that? – I challenge the idea that God would have erased form existence any text that was not pleasing or perfect – why???

Secondly, the Bible was not written by scholars taking dictation while God walked up and down His office sipping coffee. Variances are proof of what we know as fact – there were multiple authors and editors.

I suggest it would be most improbable for multiple authors to have produced exactly the same text … but I guess the stats would have then have increased its credibility and you could then accept it as true … but would you really? Or would you dismiss the stats as applied nonsense?

I wonder if, without video, come the year 2363 the statisticians will discredit the story that Kennedy was assassinated due to the variations in the accounts?

"Firstly, IF the Bible is inspired then, warts and all, the God it refers to has allowed not exist. I am not clear on what grounds you would challenge God’s willingness to do that? – I challenge the idea that God would have erased form existence any text that was not pleasing or perfect – why???"

Because an omniscient god would have foreseen that empiricists would eventually come into existence. He/she/it would have also foreseen a period when mass acceptance of a small number of ancient texts was the major reason for theistic belief. No rational omniscient being who was also omni-benevolent would have allowed any text to exist which so fervently claimed his/her existence and at the same time was so empirically wrong in so many ways. That being would have to know that any empiricist would then consider those texts to be unreliable sources and require other evidence - evidence which has never been demonstrated - to establish its existence.

Now a malicious deity, that one you could argue for (I would counter it by arguing there is too much good in the world for an omni-malicious being to exist either, but you could argue for it).

Or does your god just hate empiricists? You know, the system that brought you high-yield food crops, x-rays and the germ theory of disease.

Why would any omni-benevolent god have created a system where the most reliable path to knowledge, which gives the greatest benefits to humanity, is also the path that most disproves its existence?

Want to argue for a deity that desires most to remain hidden? I wouldn't argue with you on that one. We'd both ignore the question of theism then, just for different reasons.

No, no they are not. Small variances only tell us that if the data were faked, they were faked by experienced fakers. Large variances tell us we either botched the data taking or our hypothesis is false (or the data was faked by really dumb people).

Small variances in reports from highly reputable, multiple sources is a good indication probable accuracy. Is there some evidence of reputability in the authors of ancient religious texts that I missed? Because you know, if there was a Moses, whose major reports were backed up by, I don't know, maybe a vast amount of Egyptian government records, I might be inclined to give a deeper look. Oh yeah, that's right, "Let the name of Moses be stricken from the records." How convenient. How also a good plan for omni-hiding god to reach his/her/its greatest desire?

"I wonder if, without video, come the year 2363 the statisticians will discredit the story that Kennedy was assassinated due to the variations in the accounts?"

That might be a good point. Let me think about that for a moment... Nope, utter nonsense.

Ever hear about a guy named Abraham Lincoln? How about Julius Caesar?

There really are rules of historical evidence. They are based upon making predictions about what other evidence we will find if we dig deeper, and then delivering the goods on those predictions. If accounts of talking bushes, six-day creations, riding horses to the sky, mating with snakes to produce heroes, rising from the dead after three days or any other religious based claims had met those standards of evidence, we would be reading about them in historical journals.

To paraphrase a couple of ancient religious texts, "They have been weighed against the evidence and have been found wanting."

1) You say No rational omniscient being … Now you have a problem – if the God you refer to exists and is as you say omniscient then who are you to criticise its omniscient rationality or do you claim to be more omniscient? Your argument is therefore without merit if there is a rational omniscient being and so cannot be used to dispute the existence thereof.

2) "Variances are proof of what we know as fact" I think you missed the point. We know that multiple authors and editors worked on the biblical texts over an extended period ... the variances bear this out. Under the circumstance a lack of variances would be a real surprise.

3) Ever hear about a guy named Abraham Lincoln? How about Julius Caesar? ,,, who?

You need to consider the context. Was either Lincoln or Caesar the founders of, what was at the time, a small group that was strongly persecuted and who may just have had their records seized. Or do you think that there should have stone monuments raised to Christ in Jerusalem at the time of his death – no damn the Jews were persecuting the movement at the time (but hey it survived) besides the fool Romans went and destroyed the city a few years later destroying most of the evidence of anything.

No wait perhaps you expect the crucifixion of a minor trouble maker in a far off outpost of the empire to have made the headlines in Rome – sort of like Caesar did?

4) There really are rules of historical evidence indeed, but they not quite the equivalent of the rules of arithmetic. I suggest to you that based on the historic evidence it is reasonable to conclude the Christ lived. Too long a point to debate here, I suggest you read John Loftus on the topic (oops did I just refer you to an atheist).

Now what I'm hearing is that both the inconsistencies in the Biblical stories and their consistency count in favor of their veracity. But look, you don't get to have it both ways. If the variations in Bible stories are "just as we would expect them to be", then what, if anything, could possibly count against them? If there's nothing, even in principle, that could raise any doubts about the Bible stories, then it appears that we can no longer have any sort of reasonable conversation about it because of the believer's dogmatism.

Matt, you too are missing the point. The history of the bible is such that one could only expect there to be inconsistencies - and there are.

To try to use them as an argument against the validity of the bible as a collection of works pertaining to God's revelation to the Jews and apostles of Christ is simply ignoring the obvious - we expect there to be inconsistencies!

I'm not missing the point, I'm flatly rejecting it. There are 80-100 million people in the U.S. alone who think that the book is the perfect, flawless word of God. The multitude of inconsistencies that your are so happy to embrace undermine the claim that it is some sort of magical revelation from God. MM

1) You say No rational omniscient being … Now you have a problem – if the God you refer to exists and is as you say omniscient then who are you to criticise its omniscient rationality or do you claim to be more omniscient?"

No. I have never claimed, in my entire life to be omniscient. In fact the claim would be an antithesis to my world-view. My claim, if read carefully, is that there is a method of acquiring knowledge that has delivered the goods for improving the human condition. That same method of knowledge renders the idea of an omni-creator untenable. Therefore, an omni-creator could not exist.

I am fallible, the method is fallible. But, any alternate way of trying to accumulate knowledge about the universe we inhabit, has proven to be SIGNIFICANTLY MORE FALLIBLE. Any omnigod worth his salt would have seen that coming. THAT is my argument. No claim of my infallibility exists.

So who I am to criticize the idea of your god? The same one who criticizes Zeus, Marduk, Ra, Thor, etc., etc. The methodology that would result in the belief in any of them doesn't deliver in solving real problems on the real earth we live on.

By the way, it may be getting fun for you, but I'm really starting to get bored. Do you have any real, demonstrative proof of the supernatural? That, I would consider fun.

Matt, There are 80-100 million people in the U.S. alone who think that the book is the perfect, flawless word of God. ... if you say so and I would agree with you that they are wrong.

You go to say The multitude of inconsistencies that your are so happy to embrace undermine the claim that it is some sort of magical revelation from God

Certainly a perfect text would be more seem to more useful on some level - great for those who don;t think about what they read. Certainly the inconsistencies undermine the clarity - fact, so what. The inconsistencies in the accounts of the Kennedy assissination don't undermine the fact of the assissination - just the detail.

I am not one of the 80-100m and my point is that I would be very surprised if there were no inconsistencies - that would be inconsistnet with the history of the text. You have not made any case that an alternative standard for the text that would be realistic ... all you have done is say that some (whom we agree are misguided) think it is perfect.

Tully, Any omnigod worth his salt would have seen that coming. THAT is my argument. ... again you set yourself up to question an omnigod - by definition you can't do that; it is an irrational position to take

Either the omnigod is an omnigod or not, you can't define it as an omnigod then claim greater wisdom.

"Either the omnigod is an omnigod or not, you can't define it as an omnigod then claim greater wisdom."

Kiwi, my apologies. I didn't state the obvious conclusion from my premises. There was a loudly implied yet not straightforwardly stated premise there that an omnigod would want us lowly humans to understand that it exists without resorting to us accepting an argument from a way of knowing that has consistently resulted in erroneous conclusions. So, I'll spell it out:

If you want to argue for an omnigod that would rather display its omniscience in a way that wasn't understandable to humanity, and then expect us to believe, that begs a question: How can you, or any other human, claim to know said omnigod exists? Like Matt stated earlier, you can't have it both ways.

Do you argue for a god based on human reason? Or do argue for a god based on an argument that fails human reason? If you argue for a god based in reason, then present the evidence?

If you argue for a god against reason, then tell me why the rest of us should accept being unreasonable is a good way to understand the world we live in?

Are there any questions about the ridiculousness of the , "you should accept the universe from an unreasonable position because I say so argument?"

No, good let's move on.

Kiwi, it's beyond boring. It's become sad. If your best argument is, "You must ignore the advancing knowledge that has worked to regress to a more ignorant state to believe my supernatural, unevidenced world-view." You really should rethink your position.

P.S. to Matt,

I apologize Matt for my comments about you not stating the obvious. I've realized it can be really tough to draw the line about where the obvious is.

Tully, Matt's OP was an implicit claim that inconsistencies in the bible called into question the existence of God - my response was that the inconsistencies are to be expected. That is the point I have debated, if you want to digress onto the existence of God then I think that is topic for a different posting.

Tully you say - and I note your quotation marks If your best argument is, "You must ignore the advancing knowledge that has worked to regress to a more ignorant state to believe my supernatural, unevidenced world-view." You really should rethink your position. ... I said this where? I have never adopted that position and if you wish to challenging me please be polite enough to actually quote me rather to assemble a straw man.

Tully There was a loudly implied yet not straightforwardly stated premise there that an omnigod would want us lowly humans to understand that it exists without resorting to us accepting an argument from a way of knowing that has consistently resulted in erroneous conclusions. .

Firstly I challenge your use of consistently as it implies that the outcome is fully erroneous rather than containing some error – a small point, but you should think clearly on these matters.

Secondly, not being omniscient myself I would be interested in how you think an omnigod would have revealed its existence to us mere mortals in a way that would not result in erroneous conclusions .

I will set only one condition on your answer, that it conform to the principle of retaining choice in belief in the existence or not of the omnigod.

This is not really much of a constraint as, for example the physical appearance of the omnigod as a talking ball of fire 200ft across at the 1953 National Football League championship game on December 27, at Briggs Stadium, Detroit, would by now be disputed as to what it was and there would be contention as to what was said and what it meant … but I don’t want to limit your creativity.

Tully, Tully, really you shouldn't ... The universe looks exactly like it would if there were no omnigod. ... and you know this how? You have a valid basis of comparison? You have evidence?

I interpret your is your god incapable of creating perfection, or just incapable of communicating it? as saying making us perfect is your considered responce to my challenge as to how God's revelation could not have been misconstrued.

A weak reply. As we are not perfect, one could conclude that either there is no God or God did not create us perfect. That we are not perfect is obvious whereas the former is predicated on a view that God should have created us perfect ... again why should it be so? Your evidence? Your reasoning? I don't see how your reply advances the debate or your cause.

Also your To argue for an omnigod is to deny a huge body of evidence. ... I suggest to argue that there is no God is to deny an even larger body of evidence ... so out of curiosity what evidence do you think I am denying?

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Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

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Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.